Carfax

If you think insurance companies report all their claims, and if you think every incident a vehicle has ever been in has been handled through insurance.

Might tell you if it was a rental or fleet vehicle, and how many times its changed hands.

They certainly don't get every (hardly any) repair that was made at every body shop or repair shop around.

Heres the stink test. Sign up for it, get your 20 VIN checks or unlimited for a month or whatever, and check your own vehicle, and friends vehicles see what comes up.

Let's suppose John Doe is involved in a fairly major single vehicle automobile wreck and John Doe also has a good buddy who works in an automobile body shop. Do you think this incident will appear on Carfax?

I dont think it would appear even if they weren't good buddies.

Well, they aren't perfect.

But I just joined last month to find my daughter a Jeep.

Looked up 10 of them. 2 had major accidents reported on CarFax. And 3 showed odometers that when I looked at the vehicles were turned back. And it's not just a single odometer reading on the report. With state inspections getting better, you see the progression of mileage.

As to the accidents, just having one doesn't rule the vehicle out, but you know you have to look the vehicle over with a bit more attention.

I think CarFax says 'title altering' accidents, but it seems the accidents I've seen on the reports are 'towable' accidents. Sure, they could be missed. Especially if the tow wasn't from the insurance company. And even if it was, whose to say.

The thing is, CarFax is just a tool. But you make your question sound like you want a guarantee.

Mike

I think the answer is pretty simple, the only things that get reported are repairs or such that are listed on some big database, you aren't going to find repairs that didn't involve insurance companies, and you probably won't find some that did simply because they weren't severe,

or some office slug didn't enter it on the database. In other words, if you are worried about collision damage, you need somebody from a body shop to LOOK at the car.

glad I used Carfax when I:

was looking at a 12 month old car on my Ford dealer's lot: report verified the salesman's story that their dealership had leased it new to an exec at a local company....otherwise the "creampuff" story seemed too good to be true. (dealer also provided printout of all service done at Ford dealers)

another time, I needed a big comfie barge for local use tranporting an elderly, disabled relative.....not worried about it lasting forever or long-distance use but when we found a big ol' sedan that seemed in nice shape we checked Carfax anyway: thing had been in 1 minor and 1 major collision, had been sold & resold 6 times, went to dealer's auctions twice, etc. can you spell L-E-M-O-N? so that was money well spent

at the time, got Carfax off the AAA site and got a substantial discount......don't know if still available, but worth checking.

The odds of finding anything, that was not handled by a dealership, insurance company, or the state, are pretty slim. If you read the fine print regarding their service you will discover that to be the fact.

Let's suppose John Doe is involved in a fairly major single vehicle automobile wreck and John Doe also has a good buddy who works in an automobile body shop. Do you think this incident will appear on Carfax?